The Negotiating Committee is providing this update to the AMFA Membership at Southwest Airlines (SWA). This report is the only official authorized source of negotiating communications by the Committee.

We met with the Company on Tuesday, February 14, 2017, for a scheduled three-day Aircraft Maintenance Technician (AMT) negotiation session. As we completed the Maintenance Controller specific language last week, we returned to work on the Maintenance Technical Instructor language. Unlike the Controllers who will have an Appendix in the back of the book for their unique language, the Instructors will not require an Appendix as their current rules are more aligned with the current Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).

Since we have not worked on the Instructors language since 2015, we began with a committee caucus in the morning, and our first task when we met with the Company in the afternoon was to perform a thorough review of what sections remained open. Following the review we determined that the following articles remain open: Article 4: Classification, Article 5: Hours of Service, Article 6: Overtime and Holidays, Article 7: Training, Article 8: Field Service, Article 9: Seniority, Article 10: Filling of Vacancies, Article 11: Vacations, Article 12: Leaves of Absence, Article 24: General and Miscellaneous, and Article 28: Apprentice Aircraft Mechanic Program (Article 14: Wage Rules – Shift Premiums – Longevity and Article 15: Wage Rules will be negotiated in the economic portion of negotiations).

Following our review, the Company handed out a proposal for Article 12. Their proposal mainly outlined notification parameters for when an Instructor would require an absence due to Union Business. The Company also presented an Article 24 proposal/clarification, which captured Letter of Agreement (LOA) #6 language that omitted the day trade portion of the Article due to the fact they are primarily a day shift operation. We presented proposals for Article 4: Classifications, where we worked with ours Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to capture their current duties, and Article 7.

We began Wednesday by discussing and affirming it was the intent of both parties to have the LOA #6 language remain in place; therefore, it was agreed that the day trade issue and Article 9 would remain as previously ratified, and no more discussion would be required. It was also discussed that Article 28 would apply to the Instructors with the affirmation that they would perform all classroom technical training. The Company also withdrew their Article 12 proposal indicating that current Article 12 and Article 25 would be sufficient. We engaged in further discussions dealing with Article 7 and Article 4. We concluded the day presenting an Article 8 proposal.

On Thursday morning we caucused and continued to work on our Article 4 counteroffer. When we met with the Company, we continued discussions related to Article 4 and Article 7. We requested an interest-based open discussion pertaining to Article 4, and from those discussions we agreed to produce a Joint Intent Document to thoroughly detail their duties, specifically when Instructors train employees not covered by our CBA. At the end of the session the Company presented Article 5 and Article 11.

We will work on counteroffers to those articles and discuss them at our next session. We completed this session with the following articles complete as related to the Technical Instructors: Article 9, Article 12, Article 24 (may add to at some point as this is a catch-all article), and Article 28. The parties are currently working on Technical Instructor language in Article 4, Article 5, Article 7, Article 8, and Article 11.

Our next sessions are scheduled for March 6-7 and March 30-31. We would like to thank our SMEs Tucker Steele and Kevin Johnson for their time and input to this process.